Keytesville is a small town in, and county seat of, Chariton County, Missouri, United States.[6] The population was 471 as of the 2010 census. Keytesville is the hometown of two notable American generals, Maxwell D. Taylor and Sterling Price.

The town is named for Englishman James Keyte, the town founder.[7] Keyte, a Methodist preacher, purchased a large parcel of land in 1830 and, two years later, donated fifty acres of it to Chariton County for the purpose of establishing a centralized seat of county government.[8] Prior to that time, the county business had been conducted from “Old Chariton,” a small village near the confluence of the Chariton and Missouri Rivers. However, incessant disease-spreading mosquitoes and repeated river flooding necessitated a new location.[9]